TECH, BUSINESS AND CAREER INSIGHTS

How Well Does your Service Provider Know Your Business?

By: Steven Conour

We hear this from our clients a lot: “You know our business better than we do!”

As businesses grow and more labor capacity is required, companies have to make lots of tough decisions. Should the business hire the current site technicians, find new technicians with previous experience, or bring in fresh faces and train them from the ground up

Every choice comes with a cost to the company culture, human energy devoted to training, and the bottom line. Experience comes at a premium, and new hires have costs associated with training and learning curves—plus, the always-possible “tenacity factor” that makes some newbies want to overhaul every system and start from scratch.

Experience, however, also has a hidden cost of its own. Oftentimes, we witness a phenomenon known as “OEM myopia,” or when an OEM engineer has tunnel vision. They’re so focused on the OEM products that they are unaware of aftermarket improvements or other vendors’ superior products. Their previous employer trained them well, but perhaps a little too well, as they come to their next company with a well nurtured, one-way solution mindset.

Those afflicted with OEM myopia haven’t been empowered to solve problems creatively and poke around for a better way of doing things. The problem with tunnel vision is that it can leave you blind to other problems you’re capable of solving, and when you only focus on one narrow objective, you can’t get to know the customer well enough to serve them completely.

TSP’s service capabilities include a variety of hardware knowledge, and some of us even like to get our hands dirty on the software side of things. Our well rounded team is encouraged to find better ways of doing things so the customer experiences service isn’t just as good as promised, it’s stellar to the point of being memorable.

TSP’s hands-on, customized approach to problem solving has made us an industry leader, but it has also caused quite a bit of discomfort for some dedicated OEMs. We’ll work on anything that needs it, and we do a great job. That attitude has expanded our business at multiple customer sites that are delighted to have a trusted partner willing to solve problems. Finding opportunities to solve issues leads to more work, but that also translates to better job security, the potential for a bonus, and a stronger workforce who loves what we do and functions as a true team.

We say, forget tunnel vision. Why be limited to one problem when it’s so much more fun to make everything work better together?